


Waiting Hand

by treeson



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Multi, Teen Pregnancy, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-07-14
Updated: 2011-12-17
Packaged: 2017-10-21 09:57:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/223913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/treeson/pseuds/treeson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A secret relationship after the war threatens all Hermione has worked to achieve, and her very presence at Hogwarts. Some secrets out themselves, but there's one secret she will not allow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Where Is Your Head?

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I do not seek to make profit off this work. Harry Potter and its characters belong to JKR and I am happy for her to have that title.  
> Notes: This is the first chapter of what will be a long Dramione fic. The posting begins for a late Happy Birthday present for scifichick774. Happy Birthday!

She informs Dumbledore first, as a matter of pragmatism and expediency. His response will guide her toward the rest she must tell. Also, she is sure Dumbledore will not yell at her.

She knows herself, and knows she can take his bitter disappointment, since she feels it herself, probably more than anyone else could, but she is filled with unfamiliar hormones and guesses, quite rightly, that she'll start bawling if he so much as clears his throat too loud.

She knows too, if Dumbledore does not yell at her, she will carry hope to the rest of the people she must tell. That hope will be obliterated, she knows, as soon as she talks to McGonagall, to Ron and Harry, to her parents in person, but she still wants it, just for a time. It might be hopeless—and she knew that she shouldn't take comfort in something doomed to be temporary—but the hormones have not tampered with her essential self, and she has always had hope. It is foreign to not have it.

Hermione thinks this was the first time she had ever seen Dumbledore speechless. Certainly, it is the only time she has seen his mouth hang open in that manner.

"You are…" He shakes his head. The small bells twined in his beard tinkle merrily. "You are certain?" He glances at her stomach. Hidden behind bulky robes, there is not much he can see, even if there was anything there.

"It's only the ninth week, sir," she tells him, telling herself not to enjoy his discomfiture so much. "I won't start really showing for a while."

Dumbledore appears to come over his shock, his bells ringing again as he leans forward and clasps his hands over his desk.

"Miss Granger, I will not pretend to not be shocked"—he smiles obliquely at her and she blushes and looks down—"but I cannot understand your insistence to resign from not only your Head Girl status, but from the entire school. I was under the notion that your education is important to you."

"It is." And she realizes that she might cry anyway, because she _loves_ Hogwarts. She loves the drafty castle and its nosy, moving portraits, she loves the library and Gryffindor tower, and all the secret rooms and passageways. She loves it as only one can love the first place to be accepted for everything weird and strange that she is. She bows her head and sniffs hard, once, telling herself she can do this, she _can_ do this, and she will not cry. She swallows and lifts her head.

"It is," she repeats. "However, I have heinously abused my position as Head Girl, taken liberties with the responsibility you have honoured me with, and, forgive me, Headmaster, but I feel it is the best if I remove myself from the school in light of this. I know pregnant students are not directly forbidden from attending Hogwarts"—not that they weren't dissuaded quite _forcefully_ , if the unabridged version of _Hogwarts, A History_ was to be believed—"but, as Head Girl, it is a horrible example to the students who look up to me as a moral compass.

"I have asked and been accepted at Morgana Le Fay's Light Day School and have arranged to let a cottage nearby." It says something, she thinks, of her war hero status, that she can be accepted at one of the finest and elite magical institutions besides Hogwarts in Britain just by asking. Where she would have found it horribly unfair only two weeks ago, she has only to touch the small bump of her stomach and be grateful now.

"And the father?" Dumbledore asks, distracting her from the direction her thoughts had taken. She catches the Headmaster glancing at her stomach again, but when he looks back into her eyes his eyes are not unkind. "Does he support your decision?" he gently elaborates.

Her heart beats hard in her chest. She shifts, but cannot get comfortable, and her hands have started sweating sometime in the interim. "His consideration led me to the idea of transferring, sir," she said, to get her mind off it.

For the first time, Dumbledore is angry. His eyebrows draw down and his magic stirs the air around them. Her breath catches in her throat. Hermione, who expected this from the second she opened her mouth, leans back, wondering why he is only angry at her _now_. Until he opens his mouth.

"Has he forced you into leaving?"

"No!" she yelps, and Dumbledore settles down, but the intensity does not leave his face. She's impatient to explain now, not wanting him to shift the blame to the wrong person. "Our wishes just happened to coincide, sir. Our relationship was never serious." _Yes,_ she told herself impatiently, feeling the burn on her cheeks, _not that I would have complained. But that's_ over _so_ stop _it!_

"Perhaps we could come to a compromise," says the Headmaster. He stands and walks toward the far side of his office. He walks like he is on a private walk through the forest, not as if her anxious eyes follow his every movement. He picks up a shiny ball off the windowsill and says, "The Deputy Headmistress and I will need some time to find your records. As you know," he says, turning to her, his smile doting, "without your records you cannot officially leave Hogwarts."

This is troubling. And, contrary to his opinion, _not_ something she knew. Her fingers double their grips in her lap.

"Why are the records lost, Headmaster?"

"The organisation was never very good, I have to admit," Dumbledore says. Like a crocodile shedding tears for the dramatic value, he pauses, and then adds, "Regrettably."

Hermione waits. And waits. Finally, bold and impatient, she asks, "And...?"

As if pulled from deep thoughts, Dumbledore lifts his head. "The last battle destroyed the foundation of the room where it was kept. Mr. Filch kindly agreed to sort it out. It's a demanding task. I would trust no one else with it."

So that's where Filch is sequestered. She had wondered.

She readjusts her hands on her lap, thinking about what she wants to say. She doesn't want to appear rude, but Dumbledore is acting suspiciously vague on this front. She suspects he has something up his purple-starred sleeve.

"When do you expect to find my record? Couldn't you just _Accio_ it?"

"Not possible, I'm afraid," he says. "Student records cannot be summoned by just _anyone_."

"But you're the Headmaster."

"Exactly!" he says, pleased as he leaned back on the balls of his feet like a young boy gleefully anticipating candy. His smile is achingly familiar, almost taunting in its nature. "I estimate it will take, hm, a week to export your records. You can come back to me then."

A week. She sighs. Now she knows for certain. This is one of Dumbledore's schemes. For what reason?

 _A week,_ she thinks. _Does he want me to think over what I'm doing? Does he want me to reconsider?_

Dumbledore clears his throat. When she looks up, his eyes dart between her and the door. She takes the hint.

For whatever reason, Dumbledore wants her to take a week to think.

It's a good thing, then, that thinking is what she does best.

*

She tells Professor McGonagall next. As her Head of House, the witch she has looked up to from her first week of Hogwarts, and the woman who has mentored her for the past year, she owes her a great many things, not least of which is the truth.

She waits for the NEWT Advanced students to walk out, cursing her timing as she's forced to avoid Harry and Ron's attempts to get her to come with them to lunch or, when that does not work, tell them right then why she hasn't left her dormitory three days in a row and missed a whole day of lessons and the Prefect meeting. She fobs them off as best she can—which isn't very good at all—feeling other eyes on her and burning under them. She never thought she could use the fact that she's pregnant to escape her best friends, but she does, and gladly, shutting the classroom door behind her so hard it rattles the candelabras hanging next to it.

McGonagall's disappointment is harder to bear. She almost _does_ cry, then, and the professor doesn't even yell at her. She doesn't have to tell her she's disappointed. Hermione prides herself on knowing her favourite professor, and can see it in her eyes, in the lips that have never thinned her way but do now.

The only reason she does not cry is because she promised herself she wouldn't, at least until she finished telling the people who need to know and got back to her dormitory. She is not back in her dormitory. There are two more people to tell. She cannot cry.

Hermione leaves with the strict order to appear before Madam Pomfrey every week, echoing the Headmaster's order, and deliberates between going back to her dorm and waiting in Gryffindor Tower for Harry and Ron.

She chooses neither, and heads toward the Great Hall for lunch. She can catch her friends there and bring them to an unused classroom after to tell them.

 _It is not procrastinating,_ she told the voice that whispers in her head. _Just having my last normal moment with them this year._

She takes the shortest path, leading her by the Charms classroom. She passes the humpbacked witch and a hand reaches out and yanks her behind it.

Her startled yell is smothered in a familiar mouth and her muscles try to relax and tense simultaneously, leading her to push him away as her body tries to pull him back.

"Malfoy," she breathes. Her fingers dig into his shoulders when he tries to lean forward again. "Wh-what are you doing?"

"We've got ten minutes for me to _do_ you." He smirks and her eyes flutter as he takes her lips again, softer, almost chaste, compared to before. His tongue skims her lips, begging entrance and she lets him, uses her hands to grab his collar and pull him closer.

He's flush against her, his entire length pressed against her like he's wearing her as a second skin and it feels _so good._ She can't remember why she would want to keep away from him for so long. It's a sin, she thinks, and muffles her moan in his mouth as he sucks her tongue. She's missed this so much, him and his devilish tongue that's mimicking what he'll do to her, and the wicked fingers that leave her aching wherever they touch. She tries to think and can't. He's done it again. Taken away all the common sense that makes up half her brain, leaving behind only her senses. He smells like metal and a blown out match, and she's never smelled anything so tempting in her life, and it's no wonder she's pregnant, with him throwing out half her brain when he comes near.

" _Fuck._ I've missed this. Where have you _been_?"

"I—"

"Doesn't matter." He groans as he pulls her hand down to wrap around his cock. She gasps, her fingers squeezing as she presses her thighs tight together, and he grunts and thrusts forward. " _Hermione._ I – ngh – won't last."

He pushes her robes aside and attacks her skirt like it's done him some grave offense and he's going to challenge it to a duel. He curses and pushes it up, his hands shaking too badly to undo it, and his fingers brush over her bare stomach.

She jerks and pulls away with one coordinated effort. Her eyes are wide and she probably looks like she's seen a demon from the seventh level of Hell. In the second's silence, her brain tells her that he felt nothing, that from his shocked eyes he has no idea what happened, but then the silence ends and still she gasps, _"Don't!"_ like he has seen into her mind and knows everything.

She hears his "Granger!" and doesn't stop. She runs like Dementors are after her.

She ducks into the closest girls' loo, her wand out. She's sealing the door shut before she even has the idea. She turns around and realizes it was a mistake to lock herself here—it seemed Moaning Myrtle has visited sometime today. The sinks are all filled with water and spilling over onto the floor.

She releases a breath holding all her terror, her surprise, her anxiety. She allows nothing more.

She sighs and walks over to turn the taps off. A simple spell dries the floor, but she'll need to go back to Gryffindor to change her shoes and socks. Drying charms just leave them itchy for some reason. She waits five minutes, enough to straighten her clothes and for Malfoy to have left the level, and leaves for Gryffindor Tower. Twenty minutes later, after Harry and Ron check the library and the Prefect's Office, so they tell her, they find her waiting for them in the common room.

"Let's go to my dormitory," she tells them, and they follow her to the Gryffindor Head Girl's room. She sits braced against her headboard with her two friends at the end of the bed. She takes a deep breath and says, "There's something I need to tell you…"

*

She had only visited the Hospital Wing to get a Pepper-Up Potion. She had been feeling fatigued for a few months, but now it was affecting her during class! It became critical that she got this flu sorted out.

Except it wasn't a flu, or even stress. Madam Pomfrey performed a diagnostic. She stared at whatever had come from Hermione for almost two minutes, her usually unflappable self becoming flustered, her cheeks reddening in something like embarrassment. Hermione almost laughed out loud. She performed the diagnostic again, and stuttered at Hermione.

The comedy long gone, Hermione listened in growing disbelief as Madam Pomfrey explained to her that there would be no more Pepper-Up Potion, not for seven more months at least. Nor could she imbibe any potion that held parts of dragons, lethifolds, or any other dangerous creature. She was, in effect, banned from taking _two-thirds_ of the common potions available, and _none_ of the not so common.

Calming Draughts were, luckily, not included.

Hermione waits, begging words strangled in her throat—she will not plead, she will not beg, even if it is tempting to fall to her knees and hug their knees the longer they stare at her with pale faces and dropped jaws.

"Say something," she whispers. Her hands move, but she forces herself to grab hold of her pillows instead of reaching out to them. "Please."

Ron shuts his mouth. She can see the moment pure anger, pure _Ron_ anger, which is worse because he's looking at her, fills them. A muscle in his jaw twitches.

"I'll kill him," he said. His voice is very quiet and she believes him utterly. "I'm going to _kill him._ "

The quietness of his voice convinces her that he very well _would_ if Malfoy had been there, or if she has the insane idea to tell him just _who_ the father is. She doesn't like that voice, not one bit. She silently knocks him off the list of people she could confide in, and looks at Harry.

He stares at her for a moment, then huffs and sits back. "Don't look at me like that, Hermione," he says, making his hair even more untidy as he runs a hand through it. "I – I'm just _surprised_. You didn't even tell us you were seeing someone and now _this._ "

"We weren't even seeing each other," Hermione says, clutching her pillow tightly. "Just having fun. The war's over, I had this whole bright life in front of me, and I wanted to have some _fun_ for once. If I had known it would backfire so brilliantly, I would have reconsidered."

"Aw, _Hermione._ " Harry pulls her into a hug. She resists at first, but then his arms wrap around her, and she's enveloped entirely in his warmth and cannot think that she _doesn't_ deserve this anymore. Her eyes close and there's a Quaffle lodged in her throat, and then Ron hugs her other side, his lips pressed into her hair, saying "Shush, shush." She's confused until she realizes that it's _her_ making those choked, sobbing noises into Harry's shoulder. They rock her between them, Ron shushing and Harry murmuring _it's alright, Hermione, it's okay. We're here, we love you._

She can pretend, as she pulls one arm from around Harry and strains it wrapping it around Ron, that he might be right. It will be okay.

They disentangle awkwardly, looking furtively at each other until Harry knocks his head against the bedpost and they begin laughing. Hermione's still giggling, a hand covering her mouth, when something presses against her bladder. _Hard._ "Oh!" she exclaims. "Excuse me."

She hurries into the toilet, shutting the door behind her and barely pulling away her robes before she almost wets herself.

She sighs, letting her head fall between her knees. _This will always come first. I musn't forget that._

*

When she comes out, having abandoned her robes since she's not expected in her classes today, Harry and Ron are talking quietly at the end of the bed, their heads bent together. She remembers when she last saw that pose, on a plotting Fred and George during the war, and narrows her eyes at them as she resumes her seat. She narrows them further when they both look up at her innocently.

She scoffs. _Like I believe_ that.

"So," Harry says, wiggling his eyebrows. "Who's the father?"

"My sickle's on Goldstein."

Hermione blinks. _Goldstein? Who—?_ " _Anthony_ Goldstein?!" she exclaims. _"What?"_

"Told you," Harry says, plastering a haughty look on his face that reminded her uncomfortably of Malfoy. "It's Zacharias Smith. He's fancied her since fifth year."

"How do you even entertain these ideas?" she asks, shaking her head as she flops back onto her pillows. " _Neither_ Anthony nor Smith like me."

"You haven't been thinking Smith joined the Order because he wanted to fight Voldemort, is it?" Harry snorts and glances at Ron, who performs a mightily good impression of a fairy tale witch by cackling loudly. "You should have _seen_ how pissed they were when we got our letters and they found they didn't make Head Boy. We were there, remember, at that party at the Leaky Cauldron?" Yes, she remembers. It had been August, and so hot she'd worn a short skirt. She had later seen that skirt on the floor of Malfoy's bedroom, waking up still tasting the triple firewhiskies she ordered in celebration—then Malfoy had bought her more rounds, celebrating his own Head Boy position. His sweaty shirt had landed beside her skirt.

She swallows. "Why were they angry?" she whispers.

"Because _then_ they had to find another way to spend time around you," Ron says, ceasing his cackling and sounding remarkably like she does in lecturing mode. She glances his way, glaring a little, and he laughs again, smacking Harry's arm. "Look! She _still_ doesn't believe us."

Harry's grinning when he says, "Just watch them next time you're around them, okay? _Merlin,_ Hermione. Aren't you supposed to be explaining this to _us_?"

"I've been busy this year." She can't believe how defensive she's getting. By the look of it, neither can Harry or Ron. Her mouth still movies without her consent, however, and she's dragged along in its wake. " _I_ have Head Girl duties and, and—"

"—making babies?" Ron offers.

She collapses against her pillows, groaning. There is silence. Then, finally, "Yes," she groans. "Merlin, where has my head _been_ this year? I can't believe I let this happen."

"They do say the smartest people have the worst accidents," Ron says, nodding sagely. "I always thought you'd blow yourself up in some mad Arithmancy/Charms/Potions experiment, or maybe transfigure yourself into a rock, but getting up the duff was a close third."

"Thank you," Hermione tells him in all seriousness. "I would rather have been transfigured into a rock. At least I wouldn't have to _pee_ all the damn time!"

Harry's face scrunches up as he looks at her. "What are you going to do, then? Have you talked to Dumbledore?"

She fiddles with a loose thread on her tie. At least, she figures, we have the hard part out of the way, and now we can joke about it and figure out what happens next. Even if those questions are uncomfortable.

"Yes," she says, throwing caution to the four winds. "He's asked me to take a week to think about transferring to a different school. I don't think…" She pauses, twists her lips. "I don't think I could stand all the jokes. _Perfect Hermione Granger, finally gets Head Girl and then up the duff!_ " Shame burns next to her indigestion.

 _"What?"_ Their response is simultaneous.

"They can't make you transfer!" Harry shouts. He looks like he's a second away from jumping up and running to the Headmaster's office to thump him.

" _He's_ not," Hermione says. She sits up, taking care to keep a pillow in front of her stomach. "He wants me to stay," she says, watching as their faces distort with confusion. She sighs and closes her eyes. " _I_ want to transfer. Can't you see it's for the best?"

 _"No."_ She glances at Ron and gets the same answer.

"Can you _imagine_ Rita Skeeter when she gets a hold of this?" she asks, desperate for them to agree with her. "I'll be a laughingstock of the Wizarding world. My _parents_ read the _Prophet_. My parents will read every single lie she writes about me! I can't put them through that—I _can't._ I can't, can't"—she pushes past the obstruction in her throat—"I can't put my baby through that." Harry and Ron's faces twist at that, and she tastes tears at the back of her throat. "I have to think of more than myself now," she whispers. "Can't you see that? Any other scandal, I would face it head on. But now"—she drops the pillow, and their eyes follow her hand where she cups her stomach—"I'm doing something for someone other than myself."

"Does the father know?"

She wonders if Harry had planned to echo Dumbledore so exactly. He even had the cadences right.

"He doesn't disagree," she says obliquely. _Because I never gave him the chance to._ Her hand falls away from her stomach.

 _Nor will I._

***


	2. The Plan In Motion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer in part one.

"Granger. I need to speak to you."

She tenses and Ron, who has already zapped a wasp that got into the castle because he thought it might sting her, takes it as his cue to face Malfoy, his hand hovering protectively over her shoulder. "Shove it, Malfoy. Hermione's busy."

Yes, busy eating every food even resembling a plant Ron pushed at her and drinking almost a gallon of milk at Harry's insistence. Not to mention, busy trying to keep everything down when all she feels is nausea. She blames the grease on Dean's sausages. No matter that he sits halfway down the table, she can _smell it_.

 _Next time,_ she thinks, _I'll go to the kitchens and eat in the Prefect's Office._  
 _  
_"Granger and I have Head business, Weasley," Malfoy says, before she can gain the courage to look up.

"We do," Hermione tells Ron, rather more hesitantly than she intends. She grimaces at herself and stands, ignoring the way Harry twitches and Ron seethes.

"We should go to the Prefect's Office," Hermione says as she walks away from the table with Malfoy. Nerves gather in her stomach and spawn nervelettes. Draco nods mutely and strides ahead. She gulps and follows.

They turn onto a side-corridor beside the Great Hall that leads to a shortcut to the greenhouses. Further down is a portrait of a peach tree that sprouts a knob on its trunk when Draco whispers the password. This week it is _dutiful student_. Draco holds the door open for her and she walks through as if Voldemort waits on the other side.

She turns around as soon as Draco closes the door behind him. She ignores his pointed look at the pair of cushy red chairs by the flickering fire and begins pacing. She couldn't stay still if she Spellotaped herself to the worktable.

She has to tell her parents this weekend. Her _dad_ and, Helga's knickers, her _mum._ Now Draco is there, staring at her as if she's some crazy person—admittedly, she knows she's acting one, adding more stress to the insanity—and what if Harry and Ron take Draco's abrupt appearance at the table and start adding things together, piecing up all the times Hermione has gone off with Draco and done who-knew-what? Except Hermione knew what. And if they find out?

She groans. _Mass homicide._

Nausea is the least of her stomach problems now.

"Do I need to put a Leg-Lock on you?" Draco asks, lounging in one of the chairs she had ignored. He stretches out his legs, tugging out the wrinkles in his trousers, and looks up at her from under raised eyebrows. Yes, he is a handsome prick. He doesn’t need to flaunt it.

"You could try," Hermione says, and keeps pacing.

Draco shrugs, as if that's one fight he would like to see, and relaxes. "So what's up, Granger? Is this you going off your public shagging kick? Just so you know, I'm not sneaking into your room again. It's either the dungeon or nothing. That Fat Lady kept following me through the castle the last time. Giggling," he adds, as if he hadn't made that clear enough.

Embarrassment traps her usual response, which is a flare of anger for suggesting it had been _her_ public shagging kick. He'd been there too, hadn't he? But, now, it is so easy to see where she has gone wrong. Malfoy, for one. Hasn't she already learned that sneaking leads to nothing good? She had the Viktor debacle as a clear guide, and look what happened to Harry and Ginny last year when Molly found them in the drawing room. _That_ fight had been a roof-raiser.

If she remembers correctly—she does—Draco had treated the two-week fight like a festival.

She stops pacing and faces him. "I'm pregnant."

His face is—she never wants to see it again. She rolls her eyes and begins pacing again. "Oh, don't throw a fit. It's not _yours._ " Heat fills her face—anger? shame? She can't tell right now, nor does she want to. The shock, the to the marrow _horror_ on his face—she wants to throw up. This is not the simple nausea from the breakfast table. This is full on _disease._ She was right, she was _so—so so so_ —right about this.

"I-it's not?" Draco asks, and she hears the eminent heart attack in his voice.

 _"No,"_ she says, and brushes a hand through her hair impatiently. She huffs for good measure. He takes it in with a face still bloodless from shock. "I know how to do a paternity test, thank you."

He sits forward, face hesitant and eyes darting toward her stomach. "Not saying you don't, but—"

"Yours was the first hair I checked," she says. "It was negative. Go ahead and do your own if you like. I have the materials in my bookbag—"

"No, that's okay," Draco says, Adam's apple bobbing. Her hands unclench. "Whose is it? If you want to tell me, I mean. You don't—" He swallows again and shakes his head. Now she knows what a dumbfounded Draco Malfoy looks like, and she regrets seeing it at all. It's not as funny as she thought it would be.

"We're still discussing the problem," she says, and sighs. The heat has drained away from her face to fill up her shoulders. She wants to wrap her arms around herself and cry—or smack him. Or herself. She doesn't know.

There's one thing she does know. She's in this all the way now. You can’t lie straight-faced to a pureblood scion of one of the most well-known Dark pureblood families in the hemisphere about his half-blood baby and expect him to shrug and say, ‘Them’s the shakes.’

This would have to be her deathbed confession.

"Hermione, I have to say, I-I really don't know what to say here," Draco admits. His eyes are asking her what he's supposed to do now, and Merlin, she doesn't know.

Or, rather, she doesn't _want_ to know. The logic of the situation has hold of her and she pushes all her might into saying, "You don't have to say anything. It's not your problem. Or business. I just wanted to let you know why this has to end. I'm sorry about yesterday." Glancing at her watch, she ignores the faint trembling in her hand. "It's time I should get back."

Draco doesn't move. He's staring at his own hands, out in front of him. "It's Goldstein's, isn't it?"

"It's my what?" Their attention both jerks to the entrance, where Anthony pushes the door open. He sees Hermione and smiles vaguely. "Oh, hullo, Hermione. It's my what, Malfoy?"

"Late shift this week," Malfoy says without missing a beat. "Granger, we need next month's patrol schedule tomorrow to give to the Headmaster."

"About that," Hermione says. "I think Millicent should do it. I-I mean," she continues, gulping in the face of twin confusion directed at her, and the knowledge behind Draco's eyes, "I've been accepted to the Light Day School and—I'm terribly sorry about the lateness of the notice—but if I _do_ go, I'm transferring next week. So... um, Millicent seems like a good replacement. I've been looking at her record and, um. So. Yeah."

"Wow," Anthony says, rocking back on his heels. "That's- that's a great opportunity, Hermione. I suppose you're moving back in with your parents?"

"What?" she asks, all the emotion whooshing out of her voice to leave this cold tone she didn't recognize. How much did he hear?

"A lot of people have," Anthony continues, oblivious. "Ernie's dad transferred him as soon as the Hogwarts letters went out, you know. And then Neville. Well, you know all about his Gran."

"Oh, yeah." Hermione nods fervently. The whole hemisphere heard that row. "That. Well, it will be easier visiting my parents there, but it's the, um, opportunity, that's what's I'm going for. The curriculum."

Snorting, Draco stands and brushes invisible lint off his shirt. "Don't be so modest about it, Granger. You could've given _me_ some more notice, though. I'll be stuck with all the schedules for the next month until Millicent or whoever gets your job gets up to speed."

"I'm glad you've already thought of all the problems," Hermione says dryly. She grabs her bookbag and she is half out the door in front of Malfoy when she remembers Harry's request from the night before. Anthony didn't seem in the middle of a crush at all. She nods. He had been genuinely happy for her. Harry and Ron had seen something that simply wasn't there.

When they reach the end of the corridor, inches from the first rush of students passing them by on their way to their first lesson of the day, Draco turns toward her. Reluctantly, she stops and waits for whatever he has to say, listening to the chatter and the everyday concerns of her so-called peers. Sadness clenches next to her nausea. They aren't her peers anymore.

There are a few extra hundred students in the castle, making Hogwarts the busiest it's ever been. There were the upper years that had stayed through their seventh year to fight instead of learn that had been invited to finish their schooling tuition-free. Most had taken Dumbledore up on the offer; some opted to get tutors for the subjects they needed and take their NEWTs.

The option looks terribly appealing to her now, with uncertainty squatting in the horizon, as disturbing as Umbridge. Problem is, Hermione _likes_ school. She can learn on her own, it's not impossible and only takes a little more effort, but she absorbs better when she sits in a classroom with a professor at the front of the room. She retains, not just memorizes.

She inhales a shaky breath. Hogwarts has done a lot for her, but she has to get away before the news comes out. She glances at Draco as Anthony passes, waving to them as he goes.

"You're a terrible liar," Draco says as soon as he is out of earshot. He raises his voice to a falsetto. "'I'm there for the curriculum.' If you expect Goldstein believed _that_ , then I'm a hippogriff."

She snorts. Unbelievable. Is it possible to feel shame and pride simultaneously? It's a first for her.

"Thanks, Malfoy," she says, rolling her eyes. "See you in class."

After navigating through the last stragglers, she goes back to the Great Hall and joins Harry and Ron at the table. She casts her eye down the table, which is almost empty; not many of the lower years are as lucky as they are to have a free first period. Harry touches her arm as she sits next to him. On the back of her neck are Malfoy's eyes as he comes in. She tries to ignore it.

This is not my life, she thinks.

"You okay?" Harry asks gently. "Malfoy upset you?"

"Oh, no," she says. It's true, right? It isn't Malfoy upsetting her. He's just being Malfoy. It's her own body, her own mind. It's life and what she has to do to keep going. The albatross around her neck—or in her stomach—that makes it impossible to like herself.

Harry lowers his voice, darting an anxious glance at the empty spots across from them as if it had suddenly sprouted ears when he wasn't looking. "Then what's wrong?"

His voice reminds her of the night before, after Ron left the room to change into his nightclothes. Harry's face had been so serious, his lips white from pressing them together half the night, from pretending to be more okay with it than he was, his laughter strained. She'd known as soon as she told them her expected due date that he did the math.

He had pulled her aside as soon as the door closed behind Ron. "Is it—?"

"No," she said before he could get the question out. "I promise. Yours was the first hair I checked."

And it couldn't be Harry's. That one night—drunk and restless and Harry so damned _maudlin_ over Ginny _._ It had been nothing, just insane hormones and victory adrenaline in their veins.

Even if it is his, unlikely as the possibility is, she could not ruin Harry's life with this. He had so much, _so_ much to look forward to in life. All the things denied to him, first through Voldemort and then by his so-called family, the Dursleys. He and Ginny were so special together, so in love, just as she imagined his parents.

She brings herself back to the present, back to safer ground.

"Just thinking how much I'll _really_ hate giving up this place." She sighs. This drafty old castle that stayed standing even after Voldemort's forces tried to demolish it is her first love. It has been the one solid thing in her life—more solid than friendships and peculiar affairs with Malfoy and wars. She lets herself lean against Harry when he offers and he rubs her shoulder, a moment of pure selfishness. Merlin, they've been great.

"Well, that's the beauty, right?" Ron asks, waving a potato skin at her. "You don't _have_ to."

She smiles softly. "It's a nice thought." Pulling away from Harry, she takes the last potato skin off Ron's plate. Ever since school reopened, the elves have been in high culinary gear, serving everything from the aforementioned potato skins to suckling pig. They didn't account for specialized menus for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Every meal was a feast to them.

"Here, you can't eat that," Ron says, snatching back his potato skin. Around his mouthful, he explains, "It's unhealthy."

"Says Dr. Weasley," Harry says. They're snorting in amusement at the befuddled Ron when Ginny comes up.

Books to her chest and looking smart with her prefect's badge, she grins at them. "You three look like you're up to something."

Harry's amusement disappears as fast as an _Obliviate_. His anger makes the hair on her arms stand. Hermione looks at him and down at her lap, as uncomfortable as if he had started shouting. The thing with Seamus is still festering between the two. Hermione knows the barest of details and what she does know is bad. Hermione—reluctantly, when Harry had asked her opinion, with flared nostrils and lots of heavy breathing—had to put some of the blame on all the free Firewhisky at all the pubs they went to. She knows she blames it for her own situation.

Ginny's grin fades. She flushes and swallows hastily.

"I guess – I was just coming to ask Hermione something…"

Hermione lifts her head uneasily, refraining from glancing at Harry's expression through sheer effort. "Oh?"

"Yes." Her eyes dart toward Harry. "Um. Can we talk privately?"

"Sure," Hermione agrees readily. Harry tenses, but she can ignore it for a second. She stands, grabbing her bookbag, gives Ron an unamused glare as she snatches the carrot he holds out to her. A carrot. _Honestly._ As if diet alone makes a healthy pregnancy.

There was exercise and vitamins and…

Other things. She made looking this up the… third thing on her to-do list. She doubts Madam Pomfrey will have a handy pamphlet for her.

"—is he?"

Hermione pulls her mind to the present and realizes not only has Ginny been speaking to her for the past couple minutes, but they have reached the stairs in the Entrance Hall. She still has the carrot in her hand.

"Hm? Wait, what?"

Ginny frowns as they stop on the bottom step. She folds her arm and lowers her red-rimmed eyes to the ground. "You don't think he'll ever forgive me, do you." It's not a question.

"Oh, Gin," Hermione says. She gives her a brief hug around her books. "It'll be okay. You'll see. It's just too soon to be trying to be friendly again."

Ginny looks wretched. "But that's what you said last week and the week before."

"And it still applies," she says, though not unkindly. She nudges her forward, up the stairs. "It'll get better soon."

"Not soon enough," Ginny mutters.

She's right about that. Twenty-seven more weeks until everything is better, and by everything she means less pregnant. Then she will be a mum. A mother. She will have a baby to raise, to teach manners and how to spell properly. How to make good life choices and not join the Death Eaters or whatever radical gang that replaces them. She will have to worry about dentist appointments and doctor's visits. Then she'll have to fret over finding him or her in drawing rooms with significant others or even, Merlin forbid, behind the statue of the humpbacked witch in the middle of a school day.

She only realizes Ginny's stopped when she tugs on Hermione's elbow. Her brows are drawn as she examines Hermione's face. "Are you okay? You don't look so good."

She draws a blank on a suitable answer. No, she's not okay. She is _far_ from okay. If okay was Scotland, Hermione is on the moon.

"I'm fine." She pats Ginny's hand. "Just tell me you'll back off for right now? It's hard for him to get over it when you keep showing up."

"Okay, Hermione. I'll try to stay away." She sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose, and then drops her hand, face tight. "I can't promise to stay away forever, though. I miss him too much."

Hermione cannot resist. She pulls Ginny into a hug, never mind the bookbag on her shoulder, the books in the way, or the carrot in her hand. Let her be uncomfortable. This is more important. Ginny's face is less wretched when they part, a tiny bit happier, proving her point.

Her expression changes suddenly, becoming hesitant and a little afraid. "Um, Hermione, you wouldn't talk to Harry again for me, would you?" After seeing Hermione's face, she turns pink and adds, "I-I mean, I know it didn't go so well last time. For you. But this is the last time I'll ask, I swear! He just has to know I'm serious about this second chance."

"I'm going to regret saying this," Hermione says slowly, already regretting it. "But okay. I'll try. _One_ more time. No more. And you have to back off."

"Done," Ginny says. She grins—and though it's not quite the same grin as it was before that unfortunate weekend, it is _a_ grin. That matters. That matters a lot. Who knew life as war heroes, celebrated daily in the newspapers and frequently asked for their autographs, wasn't all cake and parties? They might get all the free Firewhisky they want, but they still did the same stupid shit everyone else did when they were intoxicated. People, she thinks, would be shocked.

Hermione wouldn't admit to believing celebrities were better than regular, everyday people, or different at all, really, but she had thought helping to win a war would earn her _some_ karmic intervention.

Ginny stares down the corridor thoughtfully. She smiles sadly, glancing at Hermione to join in the joke. "Who knew I would be asking your advice to help me with Harry again? Just shows you life's twist and turns, right?"

"I wish there weren't so many," Hermione admits. She glances over the railing as people begin to trickle out of the Great Hall, either to go their first lesson or, if they’re like Hermione, have another hour of free time to spend.

Ginny nods down the corridor. "Want to walk me to Transfiguration?"

"Um." Her gaze darts back down to the first level. The thought of seeing McGonagall so soon after yesterday makes her stomach hurt. "Actually, I see Hannah there. I have to tell her about the change in the rotation."

"Oh. Anything about mine?"

"Nope. Just Hannah's." She begins hurrying down the stairs, regardless of safety, and calls back, "See you at lunch!"

"Uh, okay! Bye!" Confusion lines Ginny’s voice, but she’s happy to wave after Hermione.

She arrives at the bottom breathless and clutching at the stitch in her side. Drats. It's been a long time since she's run down that staircase; it obviously doesn't agree with her eighteen year old body compared to her twelve year old one. She strikes that off her list of ways to exercise. That was _harsh._

Still clutching her side, she drags herself over to Hannah.

"Hey, Hannah, pretty headband," she says, smiling widely. "Zacharias." She glances back up the stairs. Ginny is gone. She turns back to the two Hufflepuffs, who stare at her expectantly. "Okay, I'm off to the library. See you in class!"

*

Hannah snorts as soon as Hermione's back disappears around the corner. She shakes her head. "A little exuberant this morning, isn't she?"

"You think she remembers Pince doesn't allow food in the library?" Zacharias asks as they begin toward the side corridor that will take them straight to the Hufflepuff common room. "Not even carrots."

*

Hermione's in her room that night, after a hellacious time in all her lessons. The professors stared, they whispered together in corridors, quieting when Hermione passed by, and Hermione could imagine every single word out of their lips. She had heard the same ones when she found out, only inside her head. It was bad enough that she had been right to expect it of them, but worse that she had hoped to prove her cynicism wrong.

She doesn't think about Professor Snape.

It will be ten times worse when everyone knows.

She stares outside her window at the full moon illuminating the grounds, spreading quicksilver across the lake. Somewhere out there, werewolves are running. Unicorns dance. Hippogriffs fly. And, inside of her, a child grows closer to being introduced to this strange, mad world she loves so dizzyingly.

Somewhere out there a Metamorphmagus grows bigger, closer to understanding why his parents are not there to care for him. Countless others are missing their parents, an aunt or uncle, their grandparents. Dumbledore had saved many people from the Death Eater's destruction, as had Harry, but not enough, not nearly enough.

Can she deny herself her friends? More importantly, can she deny her child—and it is _her_ child, no matter how many times she calls him or her 'it'—its family, when so many other children don't have any?

Yes, she could. She might even be happier. A year is not even that long, anyways, and the Light Day School will open more doors for her.

Leaning against the wall, she presses her cheek to the stone, lets the cold seep into her skin. This is her home, under this moon, in this castle, with these people.

When has she ever been frightened away from doing what she wanted?

Never. She never allowed it.

 _And you are now?_

She touches the windowpane, leaving four fingerprints in the dew.

 _That remains to be seen. I have five more days._


	3. A Reaction

_Well,_ Draco thought as he sat down next to Millicent while across the Great Hall Granger leaned on Potter, _that was different._

Scratching his forearm thoughtfully, he looked across the Great Hall at her. She was laughing. The duo seemed appropriate guardians on either side of her, simultaneously ignoring everyone else and giving anyone curious the evil eye. It was the picture perfect holiday card in the making.

And yet… Something felt off in his stomach. Maybe the surprise he felt in the Prefect's Office, that Granger would be careless in her potion taking, or that she would sleep with more than one bloke at a time. He didn't want to untangle those thoughts, so he left it alone. Maybe the off-ness was from how the green on Granger's face matched some of the walls in St. Mungo's.

"Yes, that is exactly what you should do," Millicent said beside him. He blinked and faced her. She nodded to his arm. "Stroke your Dark Mark while staring at the wonder trio. _Brilliant_ , Malfoy. Where _is_ Skeeter to get a picture when we need one?"

"Probably taking pictures of your new Head Girl badge," Draco said. He dropped his hand off his arm and observed Millicent's face as he picked up his coffee. It had grown cold while he was in the Prefect's Office.

Her eyes narrowed, she stared at him for a long, tense moment. "Funny," she said, not looking the least amused. "It doesn't look like Granger's dead."

"She's not," Draco said as he poured a second cup of coffee. Millicent boiled beside him, staring so hard at the side of his head she probably saw out the other side. He wished she would do something useful and heat up his coffee while she was there. He took a delicate sip from his cup and grimaced. The elves should have put another pot out. Next to him came a growl.

"Malfoy—"

Shrugging, he took another drink before he allowed her out of her misery. "She's been accepted to the Light Day School."

"Of course she has," Millicent said, disgusted.

"And when we spoke about replacements, your name naturally came up," Draco said. He shifted the napkin by the empty plate in front of him and added, "You're welcome."

"My name?" she asked. "Not Patil's or Abbott's? What, did you _Imperio_ her?"

He stared at her. After a few seconds under it, she lowered her eyes. "Okay, yeah, fine."

Draco relaxed, glancing around them. No one sat near them. No one had overheard. They had to be careful. One misstep, one millimeter out of bounds, one inappropriate joke in the wrong ear… well, they had crucified people for less. His hand drifted to his pocket, to the letter he received this morning, as a reminder. He would not be his father, groveling and paying out the nose. He had followed his father's footsteps long enough; he didn't care to wear the same shoes.

Her face creased in a frown, Millicent stared across the Great Hall. "You know—not that I've thought about it any," she added quickly, "but I never thought Granger would leave Potter behind." She took a bite of her eggs and chewed thoughtfully. "What do you think of it?"

"I don't know," he said, shrugging the question off his shoulders. "Should I think anything of it?" It was a stupid question. He never thought about Granger leaving, so he had no answer. Maybe he was a little surprised that she would bow to peer pressure and leave Hogwarts, because it went against the Gryffindor spirit and was therefore against logic, but, as Granger had said, it wasn't his business. He had dodged that curse, thank Merlin. He did not intend to invite trouble by getting involved or thinking too hard about it.

"Wait, leave Potter?" Draco asked.

Millicent waved her roll at him. "Well, they're shagging, aren't they? I heard a Ravenclaw saw Skeeter trying to finagle her way into Hogwarts to get the scoop."

"They _are_?" That tidbit about Rita Skeeter was useful, too.

"Oh, yeah," she said. "Everyone knows that. Ever since the Weasley-ette cheated on him." She laughed at Draco's expression. "Being Head Boy really has you out of the loop, Draco."

Funny. Here he was thinking shagging Granger had him out of the loop.

He turned back to his plate in a more considering mood. No wonder she was running away. This was a public relations nightmare for the both of them. If their names weren't mentioned once in every edition of the _Prophet_ , Rita Skeeter wasn't doing her job right. Now, though… Saint Potter's Bastard! He could already see the headlines. The shock, the instant uproar against them both, Granger especially—they would be lucky to get out alive.

He began poking his cup of coffee, inching it around his plate. He hadn't really thought of Granger outside of shagging her, except when he was thinking about shagging her or waiting in some dark supply closet to shag her. He was thinking about her now, despite himself. He found it quite painful to imagine her and Potter shagging—the boy had all the sex appeal of the Giant Squid. Painful, but quite easy to imagine. It made him sick how cozy and innocent they looked together in his mind's eye.

He glanced across the hall again to see Granger leaving with Ginny Weasley. Wasn't that a strange duo? Potter didn't look too happy at his girlfriend leaving with his ex. Even Weasley seemed uncomfortable beside him.

"Hey, Millie?" He lowered his eyes to the table, frowning. "What was that Hufflepuff's name who got pregnant in our fourth year?"

"I don't know," Millicent said in a guarded tone. "Why? Do you want to owl her or something?"

He rolled his eyes and stopped playing with his coffee. "Never mind. Remind me later and I'll show you some old rosters. You'll have to know how to write them by next week." He stood and grabbed the last roll off the platter. "Try not to go mad with power."

She tilted her head and smiled up at him. "Like you, you mean?"

He sighed, barely stopping it from turning into a groan. If she wasn't trying to be funny, Millicent was trying to make other people go funny in the head. This would be a _great_ professional relationship. "Exactly."

*

He couldn't keep his mind off the letter burning a hole through his pocket. His father's loopy handwriting graced the outside. Just reading his name on the envelope or touching the blue wax that sealed it gave no clue as to what was inside. It felt like carrying a Killing Curse all day.

He sat in the front of the room in Potions. Two years ago, Slytherins would have surrounded him. Now only two of his Housemates shared the class with him. He felt Pansy's absence keenly as Blaise settled in the empty seat next to him. They nodded at each other.

Blaise had been a neutral. At least the Malfoys had fought, even if one of them was on the losing side. He touched the envelope in his pocket again.

In the front of the room, Snape stepped forward. He stared past Draco at the doors. At the precise moment of eleven o'clock, he tapped the desk with his cane.

Potter and Granger slid in on the last tap. Faces flushed, they stared at Snape with wide eyes as the class turned in their seats to watch. Flinching the tiniest bit inside at the glee in Snape's narrowed eyes, Draco watched Hermione and Potter swallow at Snape's face.

"Potter. Granger. Nice of you to arrive. Please, take your seats."

Millicent and Draco shared a glance. Snape saying 'please' was a bad thing—a very, very bad thing. He faced forward in his seat. He heard the shuffle of Potter and Granger taking their seats in the back. What had those dunderheads been thinking? The idiots. Snape was a bastard _before_ he got his damn leg chopped off, and he was an _unmitigated_ bastard now. They deserved whatever was coming.

Snape's thin lips curved into a half smile. Another shared glance. Foreboding filled the air like the charge of thunder. Draco resisted the urge to duck.

"I hope Miss Granger's…"—here Snape paused and savored the, dare Draco think it, _pregnant_ silence, if the gleam in his eye was anything to go by—"antics are not the cause of your delay."

Draco's eyebrows were almost on top of his head. Merlin, Granger had given Snape his own Philosopher's Stone. This would sustain him for _centuries._

No one moved. No one wanted to attract those gleaming black eyes. Only five people in the room knew what Snape alluded to, though, and behind the fear was confusion.

Snape must have sensed it, because his smile—and it was a smile now, ugly and twisted as it was—grew. He took a step forward and Draco heard a gasp he knew too well. Hermione.

The room disappeared.

Ink filled the room, blackened every crevice, came so suddenly Draco saw white spots in his eyes. His white spots had shadows, and then it was just shadows and people screaming. Someone knocked into his shoulder. Draco put his hands on the table and stuck like glue. _He_ wasn't going to go mad because of a little blindness.

"Potter!" Snape yelled. He had only been feet away before, but now he sounded like he was in the back of the room. The man could move like quicksilver.

"It's not me!" came Potter’s petulant wail.

"Granger!"

They later discovered that where the lake pushed against the Potions dungeon wall had been a major battle between two factions of warring merpeople. Some of Snape's own stored Peruvian Darkness Powder fell off the shelf.

At least, that was the story Dumbledore gave them, after he spoke to merpeople. Draco didn't believe the Headmaster an inch. The walls in certain parts of the dungeon had been trembling for days, certainly, but nowhere near the amount it would take to knock something off a wall, much less a jar securely stored on the back of Snape's shelf. Besides, trembling didn't remove locks.

Dumbledore stuck with his story even after Snape shook his cane at him.

All Draco knew for sure, once he exited the room and had his sight restored, was that Weasley had a swagger in his step when he left the Great Hall with Potter and Granger.

Draco had never known a pregnant student before, besides that Hufflepuff no one seemed to know the name of, but _this_ pregnant student was turning out to have some quite supportive friends. _She_ wouldn't be forgotten, at least.

He shook his head as he left for his next class. No, she wouldn't be forgotten. Her name would be flogged in the press. Draco wouldn't underestimate just how far the vitriol would go, either. Nosy little busybodies like Longbottom's Gran, people like Molly Weasley, all those stuffy self-titled morality queens that made up the _Witch Weekly_ readership… He didn't think Hermione quite understood what would happen to her good name if she didn't get out of the country immediately. Saying her name would be dragged through the mud was a massive understatement. Through a pit filled with tar and feathers? Closer to the truth, but still a long way off from what would be done to the hero-turned-unwed mother that Hermione would become.

Maybe the world would surprise him for once, though.

Draco lost track of Granger during the next week, though whenever she was in the same room he felt a constant curious buzz underneath his skin that made him look her way. The problem, as Draco soon realized, was that she was always _there_. In his classes, in the Great Hall, in the Prefect's Office, in the library. He couldn't turn around without catching a glimpse of her hand in the air and how that made her blouse stretch across her pert breasts and—

And reminding him just how far past the off limits sign she was.

Whenever she wasn't in his immediate line of sight, one of her _suitors_ was. Goldstein, Potter, Smith – and those were just the three that came to mind immediately. There were the Creeveys and Longbottom and one of the million Weasleys. Draco was soon dizzy thinking of all these men. The list didn't even include any _Muggles_ she might have slept with over the summer.

Really, it was sickening how just out in the open Granger and Potter's relationship was. They didn't even try to hide it, and Draco wondered how he could have ever thought Granger was a one man to the bed witch.

It unnerved him how many preconceptions he held about Granger that turned out _massively_ untrue. What really bothered him, though, was how much it bothered him.

He had dodged that curse. He should be wiping the sweat off his brow, focusing on composing a reply to his father's letter he would never send and generally and partying his lucky arse off. Instead, he was wondering why Hermione hadn't informed him she was sleeping with other men. He had told her, hadn't he? Not that he was sleeping with men, but that he _wasn't_ shagging other women. He spent the week chewing over Hermione's character, searching for clues in her past actions that indicated this.

His cynicism stood corrected, while underneath the naïve glasses he hid from common view broke their lenses. He hadn't hoped for love at first sight, marriage and one big dysfunctional family—if he wanted that, he would have replied to Lucius as soon as he received his letter, and even then love was a big word—but he _had_ hoped for monogamy. There were diseases, after all. His father had told the story of his grandfather's demise to him as a cautionary tale. Draco had taken it to heart, and it irked him that she would put his health in jeopardy.

However, as the week wore on, Hermione entered his mind less and less except as a minute footnote on the main body of his day.

Except when she didn't.


	4. Last Full Day

That morning she makes a mark on her calendar as a week passes. It is now her tenth week. Twenty-six more weeks for Snape to harass and target her if she stayed. Twenty-six weeks of uninterrupted education, little worry, and sleeping in her own cottage while she spent weekends visiting her parents or going to the doctor's, all without a permission slip.

 _If_ she went to the Light Day School.

She rubs the bridge of her nose, already feeling a headache coming on even as she compares the possibilities of the Light Day School next to Hogwarts. No one looking over her shoulder, judging her. Six months of taking it easy while studying for her NEWTs. In May she would graduate, after having given birth, and then she wouldn't have to justify staying in school anymore.

Really, she thinks as she stares down at her calendar and the little 10 scribbled next to the date, it is a win-win situation, except more winning on her side.

It doesn't _feel_ like one, though. It feels like running away.

She gets ready, double checks her bag for homework and miscellaneous learning paraphernalia, and opens the door to find Ginny waiting, arms crossed. She doesn't look very happy, even after Hermione smiles sickly at her.

Maybe there's a good reason it feels like she's running away. She is.

"Hi, Gin," she says and hopes Ginny doesn't hear the grimace in her voice. She must, because her scowl grows. Merlin, that Ron. He couldn't keep his mouth shut! If she wasn't shaking at the sight of an angry Weasley on her doorstep, she would search him out and smack him.

Hermione straightens her blouse, hoping the action serves its purpose: to divert attention from her shaking hands. She swallows and tries a second time. No one ever said she went mad on her way to doom. "What's wrong?"

"What's wrong?" Ginny asks. "I'll tell you. You haven't talked to Harry!"

Hermione blinks, her brain running off the familiar track into the weeds. "What?"

"I talked to him and _he said_ you haven't talked to him." Ginny throws her hands into the air. "I thought we were in this together! What happened to friendship, to loyalty, to making him come back to me? This is _terrible_."

"You _spoke_ to him?" Hermione mimics her and throws her hands into the air, never mind her robe over her uniform. "I told you to stay away from him for a while."

"So jinx me," Ginny says, her hands destroying her robe collar. "I _had_ to, Hermione. You just don't understand how it is when you love someone."

"Maybe not," Hermione concedes. She also doesn't know what it means to be a flounder, but that doesn't stop her from refraining to breathe underwater. "But I know _Harry_. And, last time I checked, he still hated you. Now you may have done irreparable damage. Merlin, Ginny, it's only been a week since I asked!"

Ginny blows a raspberry.

She huffs. "Mature. Come on and walk me down to breakfast. Unless you've decided to do that on your own schedule too? Because I don't think the house-elves will approve."

Rolling her eyes, Ginny pulls her book bag higher on her shoulder and they go down the stairs and out of the common room. Breakfast smells divine when they get to the Great Hall. Hermione can't decide whether that's the pregnancy talking or just her own hunger, which could also be pregnancy related. Either way, she sits down at the far end with Harry and Ron while Ginny heads down to sit by some of her sixth year friends. Neville stops to ask Harry about something Quidditch-related and Hermione quickly tunes everything out, focusing on her breakfast. Grease, grease, grease. It's all she craves today, though she does add a roll to vary her diet. Ron scowls at her plate, his hand by his fork twitching, and she pops his wrist.

Neville eyes her plate. "Hungry, Hermione?"

She chews, not speaking, and Neville gets the hint. He grins. "You'll need the energy today. Professor Sprout has some fully grown Mandrakes for us in Greenhouse Three."

This, as it is wont to do, makes everyone taking that lesson's food drop to the bottom of their stomachs, Hermione's included.

"Mandrakes," Ron says, looking green. "That's…"

"Great, huh?" Neville, happy as a violet, grins. "Same batch that helped save Hermione. Remember, Hermione?"

"Hard to forget," Hermione says. She remembers the thought she had back then, too. She liked mandrakes better when she was an unconscious statue than as a mobile, thus mortal, human being. She puts her hand to her mouth, her fork down, when her stomach objects to this new turn of events.

"See you there!" Neville says happily before walking off. Poor Neville, whose joy spread despondency down the table, almost glowed with goodwill. Hermione slaps Ron's hand down when it raises. Even if Neville's words have made her … only slightly less hungry, he doesn't deserve a forkful of scrambled eggs to the back of the head.

*

"We're going to cut off a slice of the Mandrake—don't worry, girls, they regenerate," Sprout adds, though no one Hermione sees looks especially glum about this. Honestly, they look a little too gleeful to cut into a Mandrake, even Neville. Sprout motions to their tables as she walks down the aisle. "We'll root them in the tubs of sand at your worktable. If you can get those ready, class…" She peered over Hannah Abbot's table at Hermione. "Mister Weasley, will you assemble Miss Granger's tub for her? I need to speak to her a moment. _No one_ is to start until I return."

Harry and Ron tense on either side of her, as if Sprout just suggested they paint nude watercolors of each other. She avoids their anxious gazes.

Dread cowers in her stomach as Hermione follows Sprout to the end of the line of worktables and out of the greenhouse door. She passes Draco and its worse because _he_ avoids looking at her. She takes a deep breath when she closes the glass door behind her.

Hermione shouldn't have worried. Sprout's smile is warm and soft, just like the wind brushing her cheek.

"You're not in any trouble, girl," she says upon seeing her face. "I just wanted to inform you before class started that you can opt out of this lesson if you wish. The earmuffs should keep out the screams and we're stunning any that make a fuss, anyway, but it _is_ dangerous." Her eyes dart to Hermione's stomach.

"Opt out?" She has never heard of a professor offering this. Not even when Amber Greedy, a Hufflepuff seventh year, was pregnant during Hermione fourth year. Hermione had been distracted with the drama between the boys and then with Viktor, but in the dorms girls had gathered nightly for the updates on Greedy's pregnancy, whispers of horror and ridicule as common as hairbrushes. Hermione had been one of the horrified number. Who could risk Hogwarts like that?

"I can give you some errands if you're spare for something to do," Sprout says. Her lips twist wryly, because they both know Hermione has nary an unused minute in her daily schedule.

"That's a very"— _bewildering, puzzling, baffling_ —"nice offer," she says, after a careful choice of adjectives that don't end with –ing. "But have you offered this to a student before?"

Sprout's head pulls back. Her eyebrows raise and Hermione drops her eyes quickly—but why? She makes herself look up again. She is not intimidated just because she is pregnant. She is still _Hermione Granger_ regardless of the belly.

"Well, not exactly." Sprout sounds as careful as her. Her head tilts as she studies Hermione. Hermione stares back. After a few seconds of silence, Sprout stops assessing her and breaks. "If you're sure you want to stay…"

Hermione tries to imagine her child independent of her body, grown, looking at her in this moment. It has no face, no sex—it's just there, considering her, waiting for her answer.

"I am," Hermione says. Her fists clench and she forces herself to unclench them. She doesn't want cockroaches like Skeeter saying there was any preferential treatment going on in her final days at Hogwarts.

She couldn't stand the shame.

"If you're sure…" Sprout trails off, the hope in her eyes disappearing after Hermione nods. She sighs and motions with both hands toward the door. At least she doesn't drag it out.

Harry and Ron relax upon seeing her, as if they expected to find Hermione drawn and quartered when they left the lesson. Hermione slips back between them, accepting the comfort their glances give, and reflects on the spirit with which she's been received by most of the staff and her friends. No condemnation, no hate. Rumors and whispers, of course, and a certain protectiveness; but beyond Snape and McGonagall, the two most unlikely bedfellows, there's nothing like she expected. Even Dumbledore had seemed rather blasé about it. Now she wonders how well Ginny would react if she told her.

It is the first interruption of her last day at Hogwarts.

*

"So, Hermione, your last day," Zacharias says. He nods to Hannah as she leaves the Prefect's Office with the other prefects, but doesn't seem interested in following them out. He leans on the desk in front of Hermione, where she has spent the last half hour outlining the next week's patrol schedule, Millicent having passed on it when Hermione approached her after breakfast.

"Yep." Ron and Harry's gossip darts through her head and she shakes it, not giving credence to the ridiculous thought as she packs her bag.

"And, actually," she feels compelled to add, "the Headmaster allowed me this week to decide if I wanted to stay."

He straightens, stops admiring his nails to raise his head. "And? Have you decided?"

She looks around instead of answering. Draco stands by the door and his eyes catch and hold hers. It makes her think he's been waiting for her to notice him. His head tilts toward the door, a movement so minute Hermione could have blinked and missed it. It's instinctive, the reaction between her thighs, the tightening and rush.

She looks back at Zacharias and smiles. "I don't know yet," her mouth says without her. Shock runs through her arms, her stomach, freezing that mad rush of lust. She reins in her mouth, wishing she could smack it. Instead, she makes it say what _she_ wants it to say. "There's going to be a small going away party in the old D.A. room on Saturday, if I do go. You're invited."

"Much as I love a party," Zacharias says, a teasing curl to his mouth, "I hope it's a staying in Hogwarts one."

She doesn't know what to say to that, or to the expression in his eyes, so Hermione bids him a quick goodbye before exiting the Prefect's Office. She pauses at the end of the hall. Draco walks behind her at his normal not running after anyone and that includes you, Granger pace. She smiles at Zacharias as he goes past.

Sighing when Draco does finally catch up to her, she squints up at him. "What?"

Draco shows no concern about her eagerness to get to her next class. Considering her next class is Transfigurations, she isn't that eager, come to think of it. He leans on the wall opposite and eyes the passing students with Crookshanks' level laziness. Almost idly, he says, "Guess it's not Smith then."

She huffs through her nose. Hadn't he dodged that bullet? Why does he insist on talking to her, on… _seeing_ her. The truth about Zacharias has her nerves on edge already; she has never been so blind before. Now she has to tell Harry that he's _right_ , damn him.

"Would you stop? I'm not going to tell you."

"Smith is still stumbling around asking you to Hogsmeade," Draco continues as if he doesn't hear her. "And you, smiling and laughing with him. Making eyes." He turns and flutters his eyelashes at her.

This time she has to bite her tongue, but it's because she wants to smile. Or bite him. The problem, she thinks, is that he is everywhere she looks. The Prefect's Office, the greenhouses, the Great Hall. The only place she escapes him is Gryffindor Tower, and he's still in her thoughts. Constant, repetitious, wearing down on her nerves. At least she is past wanting to scream when she sees him. The thought makes her weary now.

But Draco…thinking of him, catching his eyes like before…there's still heat there. _A lot_ of heat. That makes her wary, in addition to weary. She thought that would have disappeared by now, since it has already turned her life upside down.

The body never learns.

"I heard there were things you could do. In the Muggle world," he clarifies, when she only raises her eyebrows. He is the wary one now, not quite looking at her face.

Her lips press together. "There's so many hoops to jump through. It's not viable." Skeeter and her vicious cronies would be on her like strays on a prime steak. She shakes her head. No. She won't subject her parents or Mrs. Weasley to that. Or herself. "I'm sure there are potions that would do the job for me, but…"

"You don't want to?"

"I'm scared to, honestly," she says. "And don't tell anyone I said that."

"Here I planned to send out a newsletter."

"Well don't," she says. She shifts; not caring that it is rude, she glances at her watch.

Draco is a step closer when she raises her head. Her wariness returns full force, with interest for being neglected those few seconds. He tilts his head toward the Prefect's Office, empty now that the meeting is over. Eyes flashing with mischief, he wets his lips.

"How about it?"

Though he doesn't move besides that one step, Hermione backs well out of range of his hands, her glance darting to the Entrance Hall. It's empty. And she is alone with Draco. That is bad. Not only does it mean she is late for Transfigurations—correction, _they_ are late for Transfigurations—it means she is alone with Draco Malfoy.

"Come on, Granger. You scared?"

She sees what he is trying to do. It has never worked before. It will not work now. "I'm _sane_."

He checks her over, a slow glance down and then back up, and there is that tightness again, that rush between her thighs that makes her dizzy and so very, very aware simultaneously. Aware of him, his body leaning forward, his tongue that slips out to re-wet his lips. Times like this she becomes the greatest Legilimens in the castle. He doesn't want to wait. He wants to push her against the wall, right here right now, where anyone could see his hands open her robes, slide her skirt up, his lips sear that spot by her shoulder he finds every time. He will do it if she lets him, if she hesitates the smallest bit.

She doesn't hesitate.

"They'll catch us, sooner or later," she says. "And they'll find out about me. Sooner or later. You'll be the logical choice for them, then."

Draco stares at her. Seconds tick away as he studies her, and she is certain he sees more than Sprout did this morning. She wants to know what he sees, _how_ he sees her—and then she strikes that thought for the irrationality that it is.

He steps back and relief and disappointment mix so strongly in her chest she doesn't know why she sighs.

"Guess Potter wouldn't like that," he says. That look is still in his eyes, as if he is still considering, as if he wants to press her shoulders against the wall and his fingers into her thighs. His smirk is as lazy as before. "Still. Would be fun."

Half of Hermione wants it too.

"We're adults now," Hermione says, wrapping the words around her like a security blanket, secure from his looks and his wants and her own. "We're accountable to more than ourselves now, too. We're icons for the next generation."

"Potter sung that song to you too?" Draco laughs. It isn't kind.

She starts walking. Hermione won't put up with that kind of nonsense, no matter how he makes her feel. Dismay clutches her when she hears his steps echoing on the marble behind her.

She raises her chin. Let him. He can go on to Transfigurations. She has decided otherwise, to—she swallows and then steels herself—skive off. Bearing McGonagall's disappointment again is something she just can't bring herself to do. She should thank Malfoy, really. She would have gone ahead if he hadn't waylaid her and made her late.

The problem is that Malfoy doesn't turn off at the first staircase. Or the second staircase. The stairs tremble as soon as they step on, Draco like a Grim at her heels, and the stairs immediately move to a level Hermione doesn't want. The next one does the same, and this time Draco's breath is on the back of her head, his fingertips lightly—oh so lightly—touching the back of her skirt. She could mistake them for the skirt trembling with her legs, the force of the wind the stairs make as they move, but doesn't. A breath. She's done for, done even before he moves her hair off her shoulder.

Closing her eyes, she pretends it's someone else pressing cold lips against her neck. Someone without pale blond hair or handsome-not so handsome features. She can't. It's unmistakably Malfoy. He's like a purple bruise on the inside of your elbow: you can't ignore him.

The stairs choose a landing to settle on. Hermione steps off, watchful eyes on the corridor, and they set off. He doesn't stop touching her. He presses his chest to her back as she stops at corners and checks for Filch. His fingers linger on her hips. His hands reach out for her wrists as their steps echo in sync down the corridor. Her spit is heavy in her mouth. It's hard to swallow.

He doesn't turn off at the entrance to the library. Honestly, she doesn't try stopping. He makes a noise that sounds like victory. It is fear, and wild, wild temptation that eggs her on, brimming like tacks under her skin, that takes her to the secret staircase that everybody knows about. To the fourth floor. His sharp inhale makes her face even hotter. He remembers. His fingers dig into her hips.

But he pulls her into a nook instead, another one, in clear view of the corridor, instead of one of the five empty classrooms around them. They know they are empty, still being renovated from when the Acromantulas broke the walls. They have explored these rooms before, though explored is not the technical term.

She pulls her arm out of his grip. "Malfoy."

She isn't fooling him. She isn't fooling herself. _Why else lead him up here?_

"Come on," he whispers, his hand sliding down her other arm. "It's not as if we have anything to worry about."

If Dean had tried that on Lavender, Hermione would have snorted when Lavender recapped the night later in the dorm. She would have rolled her eyes and agreed with Lavender that, yes, the boy was a legitimate pig-turned-human who shouldn't be allowed to procreate, much less hit on witches.

Hermione isn't Lavender, and Draco—she shivers—Draco is certainly not Dean.

He can read her face, the tense line of her body so well. His eyes soften, now that he knows he'll get what he wants. They crinkle at the corners, but his triumph is there at his mouth, twitching his pale lips. "Let me."

"You're not doing me any favours," she tells him, maybe a little too sharply.

His lips just curl more. "Of course not."

"Don't act like you are."

He leans down, nudging her hair back as his fingers slide between her robes. He murmurs in her ear, warm and silky, "Absolutely not."

She presses against his stomach, but lightly. Softens her voice. "Let's go into the classroom."

"Doors," Draco says vaguely, his attention more on pulling her hips against his, hands curved over her arse like he is considering picking her up. "I like doors."

She pulls away and he follows. She looks at him over her shoulder and his eyes are nowhere but on her, so alive and burning for her, his hands trailing after her as if she holds his leash, her senses delirious and drunk on him, and Merlin, he gives her this control so readily, it is no wonder she is addicted.

"This is the last time," she tells him as he sets her on the lone desk. The door, closed and warded, shuts on the possibility of her going back.

"Yeah," he agrees, popping the buttons on her blouse, his lips shining and her lip-gloss smeared across her cheek. "Yeah, definitely."


	5. Repercussions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer in part one.

  
"I think I underestimated being your dirty secret," Draco says later. He has a cigarette. He picked the habit up sometime after he moved into Grimmauld Place. Always out of sight of his mother, always a quick smoke in the garden at dawn. She doesn't know who could have taught him. Just one day he was smoking, the previous day he had not. He had never stopped.

Now he blows a stream of blue-grey smoke out of his nose, his ankles crossed as he lounges against the wall by the open window. He could be in black and whites. He has a certain Fred Astaire quality. Too pointy, not very handsome—until he starts dancing his fingers across her thighs, or looks at her from across the Prefect's Office, or gasps such rushed, passionate words against her mouth that sizzle like raindrops on a campfire.

Checking her watch, she begins gathering her robes and shoes, which she forgot she kicked off.

"Almost lunch," she tells him as she slips her shoes back on and unties then reties the laces. "You underestimated it? That's not like you."

Another stream of smoke is blown out, her way this time. "Funny. You're not planning on doing anything noble"—and he says this like _diseased_ —"like tell Potter, right?"

She imagines Harry's face, and then she imagines the destroyed common room from the force of his head exploding. She shakes her head.

"Good thing," Draco says. He takes one last puff, exhales it quickly, as if it tastes bad, and then stubs out the cigarette on the sill. Her mouth twists. Whoever gets this classroom won't like burn marks everywhere. The smell floats her way, riding Draco as he walks toward her. It stinks, worse than burned rubber. She wrinkles her nose as he lingers by her knees, preoccupied with the hem of her skirt.

She doesn't say anything. She doesn't know why. She looks into his face and he is staring at her skirt, watching his finger trace the edge, skip down to her thigh and then back up to her skirt. Something is on his mind. She doesn't notice the smell anymore, or maybe it's gone. She finds herself holding her breath as she tilts her head back.

"There are spells," he says finally.

She drops her head to pinch her lips at him. "I told you."

"Not that," he says, voice wary and distant, like a first year peeking around a corner for professors. "Old spells. Pureblood spells. Families used them in the old days, when we still fought each other."

"Oh, so not like now?"

His lips quirk, but he doesn't smile. He glances up at her, quick, those eyes peeking out again, but closer. "No. Not like now. Real feuds, betrayals, and murder. You don't know much about pureblood history do you?" He returns to playing with her skirt when she shakes her head, his hair falling across his forehead as he stares down. "You should. Give Potter's baby some history since he doesn't know any of his."

"Stop guessing."

Lips twitching, he asks, "Am I close?"

"Pureblood history," she prods him, with her voice and her shoe in his knee.

"The Blacks were real bastards," Draco says, still preoccupied, still peeking at her as if he is afraid she will scream and run off. "They killed pregnant purebloods whenever they could. Them and this other family, the Heartrises. They've run out now. But it was always a big deal for a witch to get pregnant, so there were precautions if she was pureblood. The spells let them hide their pregnancies. The bulges and things. Not even blood could see anything. You've seen Millicent's mother? She used it, last year."

"She was _pregnant_ during the war? But wasn't she…"

"Dueling my father?" This time there's no emotion in his voice. "Yeah. You can use it for that too. _You_ shouldn't do it for that, though. Mrs. Bulstrode is war-mad, and besides, she's a close friend of Narcissa's. She took it as her right.”

 _Narcissa_ and _my father_. Two very different terms. She wonders what it means for him. She cannot speculate; he is alien to her in this moment. He's never said anything about his relationship with his family before. Maybe he thought it was unsafe, then. Now that the possibility of her attaching herself to him and demanding a relationship is gone, maybe he figures he might as well.

Maybe he's bored. Maybe he's in love. She was never very good at determining his motives to sleep with her.

She doesn't comment on her thoughts. She focuses on something else. "It hides everything?"

His fingers dance over her skirt, between the last buttons she has left to button. Brushes over her stomach as if it's an exquisite piece of china. It's too dark in the classroom to see his eyes. Then again, Hermione is far too attuned to this boy. They're wide, shaded black, they're transfixed on his hand tickling her stomach with his fingertip caresses. He breathes through his mouth. "The last few months, I might see a slight bump. Nothing else. Stay here for lunch; go to the kitchens later."

"Draco," she sighs.

He catches her hand when she tries to push him away, his smile twisty now, his head up and his eyes lazy again. "I have to teach you the spell, don't I?"

Who is this boy and how did he kill Draco Malfoy? She almost wants to check his Mark, make sure he is still the evil bastard she used to think he was. She has seen this side of him before—in the house he shares with Mrs. Malfoy, in the classroom across the corridor, whispering in her ear before a meeting in the Prefect's Office. The surprise of it will never fade for Hermione. She wants to bite her lip. He leans forward and does it for her.

"Let me," he says, laughing as she pinches his arm. His other hand curls around her knee and pulls her legs open. He moves into the space he created, but she is seated too far back for any hanky-panky. He laughs again when he realizes this, and they get into a brief tug of war over where she is sitting.

"Quit," she laughs into his neck. "I'm too hungry."

"Cannibalism," Draco suggests. "You don't need that leg."

"Altruistic. I like it. _However—_ "

"There's always your right arm. You don't really use it."

"Great for balance, though," she says.

Making a face, he steps back and tugs her until her feet are firmly on the floor. He doesn't let go of her hand immediately. His warmth remains when he does. He straightens his robes as they exit the classroom. It closes with a click.

When she said it was the last time, she meant it. Let's hope he did too.

They separate at the prefect's private bath. Magic isn't enough sometimes, hygienically speaking. They don't touch or kiss or do anything soppy before he leaves. Too much risk now, and Draco isn't that besotted boy from the classroom anymore. He is back to plain Draco Malfoy, cool ex-Death Eater and Order spy. The pureblood who, while firmly on the winning side of things, wouldn't be seen undressing a Muggleborn. Not because of wards on the door, but because he wouldn't do it. They don't dislike each other in public. Before this happened, Hermione occasionally called him a friend, though always out of hearing, just in case. Now they are on more solid ground.

It's funny, she thinks as she wrings out a towel, I had to have sex with him before I could really call him my friend. Isn't it normally the other way round?

She realizes when she reaches the Entrance Hall that, in all her flurry, she forgot her bookbag in the Prefect's Office. Luckily, it's right there. Otherwise she would have never got back from the fourth floor and had time to eat lunch _and_ get to Charms class on time. She doesn't want to miss anymore of her last classes today.

As she comes back with her bag, she meets Bill Weasley just as the castle doors close behind him with a bang. They greet, Hermione beaming, while Harry and Ron stroll through the open doors to Great Hall. They must have seen him from their seats. Bill's nose is still twitching when they reach them.

It's the wide-eyed shock on Bill's face that clues her in.

He opens his mouth.

"Don't!" she cries, horrified as Ron and Harry come closer. Bill _knows_ and she told Malfoy, she told him, and _Bill knows._

As pale as Malfoy, he lowers his voice, a worried glance to the boys. "You know, then?" His gaze dips to her stomach like a forbidden thing.

Oh, the _pregnancy._ Now she feels like a total twit.

"Not a lot of people know yet," she tells him as Harry comes up beside her, Ron completing the little circle. She nods to them. "They do. I just didn't want you to shout. You looked like you were going to shout, you know."

She releases a tight breath as Harry puts his hand on her shoulder.

"How did you know?" he asks.

"Blood flow is different," Bill says, tapping his nose, which makes the three scrunch theirs. Yuck. One more reason that she fears Greyback roaming the countryside, on the run since the tide turned. She shivers.

"You on your break? You can come and sit by us at lunch."

Bill turns to his little brother, casting one last look of concern Hermione's way. "Meeting with Dumbledore," he says. "But yeah, I think I can spare a few for lunch."

Harry and Hermione catch each other's eyes. Yes, it did sound like he changed his mind last-minute.

They enter the Great Hall together. The ceiling is as sunny and clear as it was that morning. Harry sticks to her side like a burr, while Ron gets into the pleasantness his brother's rare visit and sits by him across from Hermione and Harry. They fill their plates and the first bites of food are delicious.

Bill waves at some of the students he met during the last year of the war, and at the Head table. Unfortunately, his focus—and frown—is mostly saved for Hermione. She glances around for Ginny, but she isn't there. No rescue.

"Don't look like that," he says, his eyebrows lowered in consternation, the scar slashing his face red with agitation. "I'm not going to scold you."

Hermione releases another breath, not so quiet this time, as her goblet rattles as she sets it down. Harry rubs her arm briefly, not long enough to power up the rumour mill made up of the students around them, but long enough to transfer a little of his strength.

Bill's stare is full of concern. A tiny part of her wishes it wasn't. Everyone has been _too nice,_ too accommodating. It makes Hermione's instincts tingle. The blow up will come soon. Snape's fit wasn't enough. _Nice_ doesn't last, not at Hogwarts.

"I know spells that would…" He trails off. His eyes, the pinched, worried expression reminds Hermione of Mr. Weasley. She knows how he will finish his sentence, just as he does.

"…make it not a problem."

" _You_ know spells?" Ron's tone could freeze a hot frying pan.

Bill doesn't flinch, just gives his brother a warning glance. She admires that glance. Bill might be able to handle questions like that coolly, but Hermione would burst into tears.

Above all, she doesn't want to be selfish.

Wearily, she says, "Thanks but no thanks, Bill."

"People won't know, if that's what…" She shakes her head again and he sighs. The skin around his eyes tightens. He looks genuinely disgusted as he leans toward her. "Your life shouldn't be ruined because of a mistake. You don't have to let it. No one's been pressuring you, have they?" He glances at Ron again, less brotherly.

"I can't," Hermione says, the truest words she has said all week.

That is that.

"Okay," Bill says. He isn't happy. He throws his napkin on his plate without touching anything.

She leans forward. "Can you just tell your mum, when you see her? Ask her if she'll keep it within the family? I don't want people to find out."

"They will find out," Bill says.

She thinks about Draco's offer. "They don't have to."

"So you're staying?" Harry asks her. She pulls her eyes away from Bill to look at him. His eyebrows are drawn above his glasses, his fingers touching her arm as if she might pull away. Harry and Ron, they've been so great, rallying around her this past week. She knows it won't last long—school, other friends, and prefect and Quidditch duties will pull them away before she gets used to their full attention.

"Were you going somewhere?" Bill asks. Her slowly returning good mood goes as rigid as her back at his tone.

Her voice is much cooler when she says, "I was accepted at the Light Day School. My neighbour's aunt has a cottage she lets nearby."

"So you were running away?"

"It's _my business,_ Bill Weasley," she tells him, voice as sharp as Snape's. "You keep your nose out of it."

"Ahem."

Hermione's eyes close. Her breath hisses between her clenched teeth.

Slowly, she turns on the bench.

"You're absence was noted, Miss Granger."

"Yes, Professor. I apologize. I was… ah."

"Ah," McGonagall repeats in her most distasteful tone. "A likely story." She glances at her tablemates like Crookshanks assessing and dismissing other cats as prey. "Mister Weasley. Bill," she corrects herself. "The Headmaster is ready to receive you."

"Oh. Well then." Bill gives Hermione one last look, like 'this isn't over yet.' She gives one back that says, 'yes, it is.'

He flicks his gaze to Harry and Ron and then stands. "I'll see you three later."

He hasn't even left the table before McGonagall returns her attention to Hermione. "A word, Miss Granger."

She doesn't think it will be a _nice_ word.

"Yes, Professor." Hermione resists sighing by sheer, mad effort. She consoles herself as she follows the professor toward the wall, out of hearing vicinity of the tables.

She faces Hermione, her fingers touching in front of her stomach. Her thinking stance. Hermione recognizes it from meetings when she had bad news to give. Luna. Cho. The Patil family. Pansy.

Professor Lupin.

Hermione shifts. She doesn't like thinking about that in her waking hours. She puts her hand to her stomach—at least Teddy will have someone near his age to play with—and drops it quickly in case someone sees.

McGonagall does. Her lips turn white as she tightens them.

"Miss Granger, I would like to know why you have avoided my guidance since you informed me of your condition. I am your Head of House still, childhood _and_ adulthood alike. Then you skipped my lesson today. It is simply unacceptable."

"I-I'm sorry, Professor. It's reprehensible. I don't know w-what got into me—"

Her chin wobbles and she _hates this_. She tried and tried and one mistake is ruining her life, just as Bill said. She has been the best, the overachiever, the one who kept reaching for the stars, always. Someone McGonagall used to trust to do well, and she has failed her so badly.

"Now now, don't cry, girl," McGonagall says. It's like Crookshanks trying to parent a mouse. She huffs when Hermione turns her head toward the wall, away from her, and murmurs, "I knew I should have brought you to my office."

"Please, Professor, can I go now?"

" _No_ , Miss Granger," she says, fierce as Crookshanks still. "We need to fix this situation between us, whether or not you transfer to the Light Day School. The professors at that school will not know the signs, as I do, that you are under stress and need a leg up. They will let you continue as you are because they know no better and you will be no better than a sack of rags when they finish with you."

Hermione doesn't turn her head back toward her, but she does dare to open her eyes. "What do you mean, Professor?"

 _Why do you care?_

Her eyes rather more like her Animagus form than her human form, she studies Hermione with cool intent. "I do not accept substandard work from you, Miss Granger. _They_ will." Voice full of cold scorn, she says, "I hope you have been considering this during this week the Headmaster asked of you."

"Not really," Hermione reluctantly admits.

"Well, if this is simply a move because of your condition, then so be it. However"—and this is where the challenge enters her voice—"if you intend to succeed, you need mentors who will care for you personally rather than as a celebrity to provide fodder for their admissions fees."

This cannot be. Has McGonagall changed her mind since that first meeting? Hermione lifts her head, inch by inch, until her eyes meet McGonagall's. Neither looks away. Too nice, she remembers. Things will blow up soon.

"You're not angry?" she whispers.

"I am plenty angry," McGonagall says, making Hermione flinch. "And whether or not this is your last weekend at Hogwarts, I expect a twelve inches on sharing with your mentors due Sunday. I do _not_ like empty chairs in my lessons."

It's not a conversation about missing one lesson, though Hermione thinks it is the crux of the reason the professor interrupted her lunch. The excuse, not the basis.

"Yes, Professor," she says. They both know twelve inches is a breeze for her.

McGonagall nods like a heron. "Then the matter is settled. I don't want to hear about it again." She takes a breath and the lines around her eyes shrink. "Now, there are spells my family used to cast in the old days. A binding spell. You will still grow bigger under your clothes, but other people will not notice anything different."

So Draco exaggerated the spell. Or maybe he just doesn't know, since he isn't a witch.

"I would like to try it, Professor. I want as little a fuss as possible."

McGonagall's lips twitch in amusement. "We don't always get what we want." Hermione blinks, shooing the rest of the Rolling Stone song out of her head. McGonagall puts her hand inside her robes and hands over the envelope she pulls out. Sealed, Hermione notices when she turns it over. The professor must not want anybody else knowing her family spells.

 _And Draco offered his. For nothing._

She swallows and says, to get her mind off it, "I didn't know you were pureblood, Professor."

"So you've researched these kinds of spells already. Good. To answer your question, however, yes. 'Go to a McGonagall if you want sheer bloody-minded stubbornness.'"

"A proverb?" Hermione asks.

McGonagall's lips twitch again. "Something like that."

Hermione looks at the envelope again and then nods to her. "Thank you for this, Professor. And I apologize again for missing your class."

"Keep it to yourself," McGonagall says, motioning to the envelope. "As to the class, I expect you early Monday morning so we can discuss a permanent weekend pass."

Walking away with a lighter step than she had walked toward with, Hermione wonders why only Dumbledore is called the omniscient one. Professor McGonagall has some all-knowing qualities herself. For example, she always knows what Hermione wants to do, compared to what she _should_ do, and why.

She always knows what Hermione _will_ do.

*

The Head's room is kept where both sexes could reach her in the event of emergency and/or ordinary first year away from home crying. Usually she kept the door open to the common room as an unconscious signal that she welcomes questions and the aforementioned crying. Not tonight. She smiles at Dean Thomas, sitting on the landing outside her door, his sketchpad open as he overlooks the common room below, and Hermione shuts him and the rest of Gryffindor out.

Ron, sitting at her desk with his collection of chocolate frog cards spread out on top, makes an enquiring noise. "When do you think we'll be collectibles?"

"Didn't you hear?" Harry shifts on the bed to look at Ron. "That witch in Fairfax, the one who has a lock of your hair. Bought if for thirty galleons, didn't she? You're already a collectible."

Lowering herself onto the end of the bed, Hermione frowns. "I never heard that. Was it in the paper?"

But Harry's already snorting and Ron, face flushed and ugly in embarrassment, levitates a pillow at his face. Breathless, Harry dodges. "Your expression—!"

Ron scowls. "I'm worth _fifty,_ at least."

"Of course you are," Harry says, and she smacks his leg because she recognizes that condescending tone as an imitation of her own.

"I have my own question."

Brows rising, Harry nods her onward. She watches out of her peripheral as Ron sits up. Hermione stops frowning at the floor and says, "How come neither of you have tried to talk me out of leaving?"

"Oh, were you serious about that?"

"I—ah…!"

Harry leans over to close her open mouth. She glares. The _gall._ "Kidding, Hermione." He shoots Ron an amused glance that goes over well. Harry sits back and continues. "We just kind of hoped for the best… at least I did." Ron nods when she looks over.

"If you want, we could beg."

"I'll pass." Shaking her head, she wonders what possessed her to befriend these two boys in first year. Possibly the troll intent on bashing her head in. There's that cementing them forever. Voldemort, too, she supposes. She sighs—too late now—and then glances up and laughs at Harry's confused face.

"Something funny?"

"No." She reaches over to rub his knee and looks at Ron. "A talk _would_ have been nice, you know. Otherwise I'm going to start believing you're as ridiculous as Trelawney."

"Ridiculously _talented_ ," Ron says. "That's us. I have prophetic dreams all the time."

Harry primly adjusts his glasses, looking rather like Percy in a Harry-suit. "About Lavender."

Hermione ducks as another pillow flies their way.

No, it is positively too late now, and as her pillows get a fantastic beating, she can't help but be thankful.


End file.
